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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”